Episode  5:  Lift  Pack    

 

 

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Narrator:   You  are  listening  to  the  Slack  Variety  Pack.  A  collection  of  stories  about  work,  life,  and  everything  in  between.  Brought  to  you  by  Slack.  If  you  don't  know  what  Slack  is,  head  over  to  Slack.com  and  change  your  working  life  forever.  Here  are  three  quick  pitches  for  stories  on  this  episode.  It's  the  Apple  Watch  meets  The  Great  Gatsby.    

Smart  Watch  Guy:   In  the  early  1900s,  both  Packard  and  Graves  became  obsessed  with  owning  the  most  complicated  watch  ever.    

Narrator:   It's  a  Dear  John  letter,  on  voicemail.    

Voicemail  Guy:   I'm  calling  to  say  that  I  think  we're  done.  

Narrator:   It's  A  League  of  Their  Own  meets  the  social  network.  

Kimberly  Bryant:   Creating  the  next  black  female  Mark  Zuckerberg;  I  think  that's  possible.  

Narrator:   But  first,  it's  Entourage  meets  Silicon  Valley.  Slack  Variety  Pack?  Yeah.  Cool.  Making  work  less  worky.  From  Twitter  to  texting,  it's  more  important  than  ever  to  get  to  the  point  and  communicate  ideas  clearly,  cleaning,  and  most  importantly,  quickly.  It  seems  like  our  entire  life  is  a  series  of  elevator  pitches,  to  grab  the  attention  of  others.  Where  did  this  microcommunication  trend  start?  On  the  ground  floor,  with  Ilene  Rosenzweig,  trying  to  advance  your  boyfriend's  career.  

El  Operator:   Everyone  in?  Okay.  First  floor.  History  of  the  elevator  pitch.    

Ilene:   I  suppose  I  coined  the  term  "elevator  pitch"  back  when  I  lived  in  New  York  ...  I  guess  that  was  in  the  '90s,  and  was  a  journalist,  and  was  dating  another  journalist,  Michael  Caruso,  who  was  a  senior  editor  at  Vanity  Fair,  at  the  time.  It  was  a  very  exciting  job  because  Tina  Brown  was  Editor-­‐in-­‐Chief.  She  was  an  ambitious  editor  who  was  always  trying  to  pitch  her  stories,  but  she  was  always  on  the  move  and  he  would  try  to  snag  her  to  get  a  story  pitch  out  and  sometimes  the  only  way  he  would  be  able  to  do  it  is  to  jump  into  the  elevator  with  her,  when  she  was  on  the  way  out  to  her  Town  Car,  and  literally  in  just  four  floors  to  be  able  to  sum  up  an  entire  potential  15,000-­‐word  story  idea.  When  he  would  come  home,  it  eventually  just  became,  "So,  how  was  your  elevator  pitch  today?"  

  I  think  the  funny  thing  about  the  expression  "elevator  pitch"  is  the  times  have  changed  since  the  '90s,  where  things  become  so  fast-­‐paced.  You  just  have  to  catch  people  on  their  way  from  one  place  to  another  in  order  to  be  able  to  get  face  time  with  them.  People  are  doing  elevator  pitches  all  

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the  time,  whether  you're  sending  a  text  or  an  email.  You're  not  having  a  deep,  long  conversation  so  much  anymore  to  explain  an  idea.  People  have  the  impression  that  if  you  can't  distill  it  into  two  sentences  or  less  that  it's  flabby.  People  are  definitely  in  a  mode  now  of  trying  to  capture  somebody's  attention  in  a  very  short  amount  of  time.  Maybe  the  next  generation  of  elevator  pitch  would  be  the  Uber  pitch,  a  pitch  that  you  would  conduct  in  the  time  that  it  takes  you  between  texting  for  your  Uber  and  it  arriving;  which  is  I  guess  about,  probably  90  seconds?  

Narrator:   The  elevator  pitch  is  now  standard  currency  in  Silicon  Valley.  Legend  has  it  that  you  are  fired  if  you  couldn't  explain  what  you  did  at  Apple  during  an  elevator  ride  with  Steve  Jobs.  Today,  start-­‐ups  are  pitching  themselves  to  venture  capitalists  with  an  even  newer  type  of  elevator  pitch;  Hollywood  style.    

El  Operator:   27th  floor,  the  new  elevator  pitch.  

Startup  Guy:   The  biggest  elevator  pitch  for  your  start-­‐up  may  be  to  just  combine  two  things  that  already  exist.  You  know,  it's  the  Tinder  of  blank.  It's  blank  meets  Instagram.  It's  a  kind  of  shorthand  that  people  can  use  to  refer  to  your  company.  I  found  dozens  of  examples  of  these  in  recent  blog  posts  and  news  articles,  so  here  are  28  real  elevator  pitches  and  two  fake  ones:  Uber  for  massages,  Uber  for  tailors,  the  Uber  of  bodyguard,  the  Tinder  of  real  estate,  the  Tinder  of  cuddling,  the  Tinder  of  baseball  recruiting,  the  Tinder  of  pet  adoption,  Facebook  for  clinical  researchers,  the  Minecraft  of  underwater  exploration,  the  Candy  Crush  of  data,  the  Instagram  of  recipes,  the  Snapchat  of  email,  the  Snapchat  of  money,  Gmail  for  photos,  the  Pinterest  of  dating,  the  Warby  Parker  of  hearing  aids,  the  Warby  Parker  of  mattresses,  the  Shazam  of  cinema,  the  Craigslist  of  breast  milk,  the  Craigslist  of  crap,  the  Craigslist  of  the  vaping  community,  the  LinkedIn  of  YouTube,  the  LinkedIn  of  supply  chain,  the  Fitbit  of  baby  monitors,  the  Airbnb  of  parking  lots,  the  Airbnb  of  home-­‐cooked  meals,  the  Airbnb  of  bikes,  the  Airbnb  of  boats,  the  Twitch  of  mobile  gaming,  the  Yelp  of  hospitals.  

  Can  you  tell  which  ones  were  real?  I  lied  earlier.  They're  all  real.  If  you  want  to  see  which  companies  we're  talking  about,  head  over  to  Slack.com/varietypack.  

Narrator:   All  this  talk  about  elevator  pitches  got  us  wondering  about  elevators  in  general.  What  is  it  about  those  things  that  make  us  so  socially  awkward  when  we're  inside  them?  Let's  go  up  a  few  floors  and  find  out.  

El  Operator:   Top  floor.  Men's  shoes,  hardware,  and  elevator  awkwardness.  

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Elevator  Report:   Well,  here  I  am,  in  the  elevator  again.  The  other  guys  just  moved  from  the  center  to  the  back  corner,  so  okay,  I'll  go  into  my  corner,  dude.  Look  at  the  ceiling,  look  at  the  ceiling,  look  straight  ahead.  Five  more  floors.  Another  one  getting  in,  turning,  smile,  she's  looking  at  the  ground  like  you  don't  exist.  Am  I  gassy?  Or  am  I  ...  What's  happening  here?  "Excuse  me,  why  did  you  move  to  the  far  back  corner?"    

Guy  in  Elevator:   I  don't  know.  I  guess  it's  a  comfort  thing.  Same  as  why  guys  stand  ...  Don't  pick  your  nose  right  beside  one  another.    

Elevator  Report:   Why  are  you  moving  far  away  from  me?    

Elevator  Girl  2:   Just  being  polite,  giving  people  their  space.    

Elevator  Girl  3:   Because  you  put  a  mic  in  my  face.    

Elevator  Report:   Okay,  she's  right  about  the  mic,  but  how  has  the  elevator  evolved  into  such  an  unpleasant  social  experience?    

Dr.  Lee  Gray:   We  don't  talk  to  each  other  in  elevators.  We're  happy  to  look  at  something,  but  conversation  is  very  awkward.    

Elevator  Report:   Dr.  Lee  Gray  is  a  professor  of  architecture  and  an  elevator  book  author,  who  knows  these  things  so  well,  he's  known  in  America  as  the  elevator  guy.  

Dr.  Lee  Gray:   We  have  a  very  large  sense  of  personal  space.  The  elevator  is  such  a  tiny  little  room,  that  we  try  to  quite  literally  distance  ourselves  from  the  second  passenger  to  get  in  and  you  can  watch  this  ripple  effect  as  more  passengers  get  into  the  elevator.    

Elevator  Report:   He  says  elevators  never  really  used  to  be  that  awkward.  The  first  passenger  lift  came  to  us  in  a  New  York  Hotel  almost  150  years  ago,  and  it  wasn't  that  bad.  In  fact,  it  was  kind  of  a  comfy  place  to  hang  out.    

Dr.  Lee  Gray:   The  initial  elevators  were  introduced  into  large  urban  hotels  and  they  were,  in  fact,  little  rooms.  They  had  cushioned,  upholstered  seats,  mirrors  on  the  walls,  gas  chandeliers  hanging  down  from  the  ceiling,  and  the  car  did  not  move  until  all  of  the  passengers  were  comfortably  seated  and  then  the  operator  would  take  the  car  along  its  way.  The  initial  experience  was  very  different  than  today.  

Elevator  Report:   But  good  things  weren't  meant  to  last.    

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Dr.  Lee  Gray:   As  the  elevator  moved  into  the  office  building,  then  it,  no  pun  intended,  picked  up  speed,  lost  the  bench,  and  we  began  standing  rather  than  sitting.  

Elevator  Report:   It's  precisely  this  helpless,  unnatural  standing  around  strangers  that  gives  us  social  anxiety  as  we  ride  up  and  down,  up  and  down.  It  sucks.  For  human  interaction  ...  

Dr.  Lee  Gray:   In  an  elevator,  there's  only  so  far  you  can  move,  so  you  can  make  someone  quite  awkward  if  you  wanted  to.  

Elevator  Report:   Personal  space.  

Dr.  Lee  Gray:   If  it's  one  person,  we  stand  right  in  the  center  and  that  space  is  ours.  When  someone  else  enters,  often  you'll  see  people  move  to  a  corner  or  move  to  one  side.  

Elevator  Report:   A  normal  conversation.  

Dr.  Lee  Gray:   If  two  people  are  having  a  conversation  and  they  get  onto  an  elevator  and  there's  a  third  person  there  that  they  do  not  know,  often  that  conversation  will  stop.  

Elevator  Report:   So  what's  being  done  to  make  this  elevator  experience  way  less  painful?  I  attended  an  annual  elevator  convention.  Yes,  an  elevator  convention,  to  get  some  insight.  A  little  surreal.  Hundreds  of  people  from  all  over  the  world,  schmoozing,  schwagging,  and  selling  elevator  stuff.  Beyond  the  mechanical  booths  of  springs  and  buttons  and  wires,  a  lot  of  these  people  were  selling  aesthetics.  Jonathan  Nadir  owns  an  elevator  interior  renovation  company  that  uses  design  to  distract  us.  

Jonathan  Nadir:   In  our  industry,  on  the  interior  side,  it  used  to  be  all  elevators  had  seven-­‐panel  configuration;  three  vertical  panels  on  the  back  wall,  two  on  the  side  walls.  Very  boring  and  uninteresting.  Now  we  do  a  mass  of  high-­‐resolution  graphical  panels  with  backlighting  and  granite  floors  and  all  kinds  of  really  beautiful  things  that  were  never  possible  in  the  past.    

Elevator  Report:   Music,  menu  postings,  viral  videos;  it's  all  there  to  mask  our  helpless  feeling  of  being  stuck  in  a  box  with  strangers.  In  an  elevator,  we'll  take  anything  over  human  interaction.    

Jonathan  Nadir:   Cell  phones  have  given  some  passengers  an  easy  out.  They'll  just  stand  there  and  stare  at  their  cell  phone.  Even  if  they're  not  really  doing  

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anything,  that  allows  them  to  pretend,  well,  I'm  busy,  therefore  I  don't  have  to  talk  to  someone.    

Elevator  Report:   If  distraction  is  the  answer  to  elevator  awkwardness,  then  Gray  doesn't  really  foresee  a  sudden  shift  into  social  graces.    

Dr.  Lee  Gray:   It  would  be  very  difficult  to  change.  In  some  ways,  I  suppose  if  one  in  ten  people  decided  that's  their  mission  in  life,  to  engage  their  fellow  human  beings  in  the  elevator,  then  maybe  that  would  gradually  change  and  we  would  become  more  comfortable,  but  some  of  the  conversations  would  last  all  of  25  seconds.    

Elevator  Report:   Me,  I  still  believe  there's  hope.  I  have  a  couple  floors  to  go,  would  you  like  to  chat?    

Elevator  Girl  1:   I'm  good,  thanks.  

El  Operator:   Thanks  for  riding  with  us  today.  

Narrator:   Slack  variety  pack.  You  didn't  think  this  whole  episode  was  about  elevators,  did  you?  On  with  the  show.  

Voicemail:   This  person  cannot  be  reached  at  the  moment.  Please  leave  a  message  after  the  tone.  

Voicemail  Guy:   Hey,  it's  me.  Look,  I  know  this  is  kind  of  weird  to  do  over  voicemail,  but  I'm  calling  to  say  that  I  think  we're  done.  This  really  shouldn't  come  as  shock  because  I  think  we  both  know  that  we've  been  drifting  apart  for  a  really  long  time.  I  haven't  even  checked  in  with  you  for  like  a  month.  Don't  get  me  wrong;  we  have  a  lot  of  good  years.  I  think  about  all  those  times  that  I'd  write  a  silly  song  for  you  or  make  jokes  for  you  and  we'd  share  them  with  everyone  and  people  thought  we  were  hilarious.  You  remember  that?  Every  time  I  get  a  message  from  you,  I  get  this  knot  in  my  stomach  because  I  know  that  I'm  going  to  have  to  call  in,  wait  for  it  to  ring,  listen  to  some  stupid  message,  enter  my  password,  hit  one,  listen  to  a  long,  rambling  message,  and  hit  7,  9  or  12;  I  don't  even  know,  just  to  delete  the  message.  The  thing  is,  I  don't  even  need  to  listen  to  it  because  I  can  see  who  called.  I  guess  what  I'm  saying,  Voicemail,  is  I'm  breaking  up  with  you.  It's  not  me,  it's  definitely  you.  

Voicemail:   To  confirm,  press  one.  To  listen  again,  press  two.  To  [crosstalk  00:12:40]  ...  

Voicemail  Guy:   What?  This  is  exactly  why  I'm  dumping  you.  Shut  up!  

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Narrator  3:   Channel  change.  The  many  complications  of  the  very  first  Smart  Watch.    

Smart  Watch  Guy:   What  can  your  Smart  Watch  do?  Measure  your  heartbeat,  your  footsteps,  your  movements,  your  golf  swing.  It  can  notify  you  of  messages,  sports  scores,  weather  anywhere  in  the  world.  It  communicates,  it  takes  notes.  It  will  replace  your  credit  cards  and  hotel  room  keys.  It  does  thousands  of  things,  maybe  millions,  but  let's  go  back  before  watches  got  smart,  before  they  even  got  digital.    

  About  a  hundred  years  ago,  in  the  time  of  wool  bathing  suits  and  unironic  mustaches,  in  kangaroo  boxing  and  slow  zooms  into  Sepia  photographs,  back  before  this  kind  of  music  was  only  heard  on  ice  cream  trucks.  Back  then,  two  men  competed  for  thirty  years  and  spent  enormous  amounts  of  money  to  build  the  most  technologically  advanced  watch  ever.  The  result  was  a  pocket  watch  that  could  do  not  millions  or  thousands  of  things,  but  24  different  things.    

  One  of  these  men  was  James  Ward  Packard,  from  the  tiny  town  of  Warren,  Ohio.  He  was  an  engineering  prodigy  during  the  time  when  the  newest  gadgets  were  things  like  phonographs  and  bicycles  and  cameras.  When  he  grew  up,  he  started  Packard  automobiles,  America's  first  luxury  car  company.  The  first  cars  with  steering  wheels,  which  seems  kind  of  obvious,  now.  His  rival  was  Henry  Graves,  Jr.,  who  came  from  one  of  the  richest  families  in  the  country.  He  attended  auctions  in  New  York  and  collected  art  and  coins  and  furniture.  His  collections  were  guided  by  one  principle:  If  it's  not  the  best,  it's  not  worth  owning.  

  In  the  early  1900s,  both  Packard  and  Graves  became  obsessed  with  owning  the  most  complicated  watch  ever.  In  a  world  of  mechanical  watches,  you  know,  old-­‐timey  watches,  the  kind  you  wind,  with  the  big  hand  and  the  little  hand,  anything  a  watch  can  do  beyond  telling  time  is  known  as  a  complication.  It's  essentially  an  app,  but  the  thing  is,  complications  make  everything  complicated.  How  do  you  move  all  the  gears  and  wheels  at  the  right  speeds  based  off  a  single  power  source?  How  do  you  cram  all  those  extra  components  into  the  watch  case?  Figuring  that  out  can  be  pretty  expensive.    

  The  problem  with  trying  to  buy  the  most  complicated  watch  in  the  world  was,  it  didn't  exist.  You  had  to  send  your  idea  for  the  watch  to  the  watch  maker,  pay  the  equivalent  of  $30,000  or  $40,000  dollars,  in  today's  money,  then  wait  months  and  years  as  they  designed  and  built  it.  It  all  started  in  1905,  when  the  car  maker  Packard  commissioned  Switzerland's  Patek  Philippe  to  build  a  watch  with  four  complications.  A  perpetual  calendar,  a  minute  repeater  that  chimed  the  number  of  minutes  passed  

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on  demand  so  that  you  could  hear  the  time,  even  in  the  dark,  something  like  what  you're  hearing  right  now,  and  two  more  chimes  for  the  full  and  quarter  hours.    

  Graves  got  the  same  company  to  make  his  watches,  but  he  was  always  a  step  behind.  Packard  was  an  engineer.  He  could  envision  the  mechanics  of  these  watches  and  he  knew  what  to  ask  for.  Graves  had  all  the  money  in  the  world,  but  he  didn't  have  the  vision.  The  funny  thing  is,  these  guys  never  met.  They  only  knew  what  the  other  was  up  to  through  rumors  in  the  watch  community.  The  other  funny  thing  is  that  they  were  rich,  like  so  rich.  The  idea  of  someone  having  a  million  dollars  was  still  pretty  new  and  both  of  these  guys  had  many,  many  millions  of  dollars.  The  reason  that  that's  funny  is  because  when  you're  that  rich,  you  don't  actually  need  a  watch.  You  never  even  need  to  be  on  time.  People  will  adjust  their  schedules  to  you.    

  By  1916,  it  was  pretty  clear  Packard  was  wiping  the  floor  with  Graves  in  this  secret  competition.  That's  the  year  Packard  received  another  masterpiece,  this  one  with  an  astonishing  16  complications;  bells,  phases  of  the  moon,  you  know,  useful  stuff,  all  in  one  device.  Graves  hated  coming  in  second,  but  what  was  he  going  to  do?  Just  ask  for  a  watch  that  had  everything  Packard  had,  plus  one?  That's  kind  of  what  he  did.  

  He  set  up  a  secret  meeting  to  commission  a  watch  with  the  simple,  explicit  instructions  that  it  have,  in  his  words,  "The  maximum  possible  number  of  complications  and,  in  any  case,  certainly  more  complicated  than  that  of  Mr.  Packard."  It  took  three  years  to  design,  five  years  to  build,  and  when  it  arrived  in  1933,  Graves'  super  complication,  as  it's  known,  was  the  size  of  a  hockey  puck  and  had  24  complications,  including  a  perpetual  calendar,  the  time  of  the  sunrise  and  the  sunset  in  New  York,  two  stop-­‐watches,  chimes,  and  a  moving  map  of  the  night  sky,  as  seen  from  Central  Perk  ...  Oh  wait,  Central  Park.  Although  that  would've  been  amazing.  Ross  and  Joey  and  the  gang,  Gunther.  This  watch  remains,  to  this  day,  the  most  complicated  mechanical  watch  every  built  without  computer  assistance.  In  2014,  it  sold  at  auction  for  $24  million,  US.  That's  a  million  dollars  per  complication,  so  don't  feel  bad  about  spending  a  couple  bucks  on  an  app.  

Narrator:   To  see  what  the  world's  first  Smart  Watch  looked  like,  head  to  Slack.com/varietypack.    

Narrator  3:   Channel  change,  big  picture  channel,  Black  Girls  Code.  

Kaya  Thomas:   I  really  started  coding  only  about  a  year  and  a  half  ago,  actually.  

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BGC  Report:   Meet  Kaya  Thomas,  a  second-­‐year  computer  science  student  at  Dartmouth  College.  She  taught  herself  how  to  code  after  watching  an  inspiring  talk  by  her  soon-­‐to-­‐be  mentor.  

Kaya  Thomas:   What  inspired  me  to  start  coding,  I  saw  a  TED  talk  given  by  the  founder  of  Black  Girls  Code,  Kimberly  Bryant.  

Kimberly  Bryant:   I  always  like  to  say  Black  Girls  Code  is  a  movement.  [crosstalk  00:18:59]  ...  

Kaya  Thomas:   As  she  talked  about  how  a  lot  of  women  of  color,  specifically,  are  consumers  of  technology  but  often  not  creators  of  technology.  That  really  lit  a  spark  and  I  said,  "Why  aren't  I  actually  creating  the  technology  that  I  use  every  day?"    

BGC  Report:   Silicon  Valley  has  a  diversity  problem.  It's  an  issue  that's  finally  getting  the  attention  it  deserves,  but  there's  still  so  much  that  needs  to  happen  to  increase  diversity  hires  and  make  the  tech  sector  an  appealing  place  to  work  for  everyone.  Fortunately,  there  are  some  people  working  hard  to  change  the  current  state  of  the  industry  and  change  the  perception  that  women  don't  code.  Kimberly  Bryant  I  the  founder  and  executive  director  of  Black  Girls  Code,  a  nonprofit  organization  that  gets  girls  of  color  interested  in  technology  careers.  We  caught  up  with  her  recently  on  the  streets  of  New  York.  

Kimberly  Bryant:   My  inspiration  for  founding  Black  Girls  Code  started  with  my  daughter,  who  was  a  middle  schooler.  She  was  really  a  heavy  video  game  player  and  just  wanted  to  really  become  a  video  game  tester  when  she  grew  up.  I  was  looking  for  a  way  to  redirect  her,  something  that  would  put  her  in  the  creator's  role  as  opposed  to  a  consumer,  and  found  an  opportunity  for  her  to  do  a  summer  camp  and  learn  about  game  development  and  design.  Looking  around  that  classroom,  it  wasn't  very  diverse  and  I  wanted  to  create  an  organization  that  would  help  her  to  find  her  place  in  the  world,  find  other  people  that  look  like  her  that  were  interested  in  the  same  thing  and  not  be  discouraged.    

BGC  Report:   What  started  off  as  a  pilot  project  of  10-­‐12  girls  in  2011,  Black  Girls  Code  now  has  over  3,000  students  with  seven  chapters  across  the  US  and  one  in  Johannesburg.  It's  making  a  difference.  

Kimberly  Bryant:   I  see  so  much  impact  from  the  work  that  we've  done,  even  in  just  three  short  years.  From  our  students,  I'm  seeing  girls  that  are  coming  into  the  program  with  very  little  access  to  coding  and  very  little  experience  at  Computer  Science  and  they're  going  on  and  taking  the  little  bit  that  we  teach  them  to  learn  even  additional  languages,  to  create  apps.  Even  

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students  that  started  a  little  bit  later  in  the  program  that  are  now  decided  to  go  to  college  and  major  in  Computer  Science  and  then  are  coming  back  into  the  valley  and  taking  internships  at  some  of  the  tech  companies  in  the  area.  I  just  think  Black  Girls  Code  is  changing  the  conversation.    

BGC  Report:   Kaya  Thomas  learned  how  to  program  in  Python  and  built  an  app  called  We  Read  Too.  

Kaya  Thomas:   I've  loved  books,  as  a  kid  and  even  as  a  teen,  I  was  always  in  the  library,  but  then  as  I  got  older  and  I  started  really  thinking  about  my  identity,  I  kind  of  felt  left  out  in  the  books  that  I  was  reading.  I  didn't  see  myself  or  even  some  of  my  friends  in  these  books,  so  then  I  started  searching  for  these  books  and  I  saw  that  there  are  a  lot  of  books  out  there.  They  just  weren't  at  the  top  of  the  bestseller,  at  the  bookstores  and  stuff  like  that.  I  said,  "Why  isn't  there  a  central  resource  where  I  can  find  these  books  that  have  been  written  by  authors  of  color  and  the  characters  inside  the  books  are  also  people  of  color?  Let  me  try  to  make  an  app  and  put  all  these  books  in  one  place  so  that  kids  like  me  and  parents,  educators,  can  find  these  books  for  their  students."  I  wanted  these  books  to  be  available  and  known  to  more  people.    

BGC  Report:   We  Read  Too  has  been  downloaded  around  the  world  and  it's  even  being  used  by  one  of  the  most  influential  people  in  the  world.    

Kaya  Thomas:   I  had  the  wonderful  honor  of  being  awarded  by  First  Lady  Michelle  Obama  at  the  Black  Girls  Rock  Award  for  the  work  with  my  app  and  also  my  work  with  Black  Girls  Code  and  different  education  initiatives.  

Michelle  Obama:   You  are  brilliant!  You  are  funny!  

BGC  Report:   Despite  her  recent  recognition,  Kaya  wants  her  coding  chops  to  come  first.    

Kaya  Thomas:   I  think  it's  great,  yeah.  I  want  companies  to  be  excited  to  hire  more  black  women  on  their  teams,  but  I  do  want  to  be  known  for  the  work  that  I'm  doing,  rather  than  not  just,  "Okay,  let's  hire  her  because  she's  a  black  woman."  I  want  them  to  hire  me  because,  "Wow,  look  at  all  the  awesome  things  she's  done,  and  yes,  she's  a  black  woman."    

Michelle  Obama:   Let  me  tell  you,  I  am  so  proud  of  you.  My  husband,  your  president,  is  so  proud  of  you.  

Kimberly  Bryant:   My  long-­‐term  vision  from  a  numbers  perspective  is  to  be  able  to  reach  a  million  girls  of  color,  teach  them  how  to  code,  by  the  year  2040,  but  

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really,  ideally,  I  want  to  see  girls  and  women  of  color  taking  leadership  roles,  starting  companies  that  are  really  the  big  tech  companies  in  the  next  couple  decades  that  we  see  and  we  talk  about.  I  always  kind  of  joke,  but  not  really  joke  about  creating  the  next  black  female  Mark  Zuckerberg.  I  think  that's  possible,  because  many  of  the  women  that  I  talk  to,  that  maybe  had  an  interest  in  the  industry  as  a  young  girl,  somewhere  along  the  way  lost  that  interest  or  just  were  discouraged  from  going  into  the  field.  I  think  we  have  an  opportunity  to  change  that  dynamic  with  the  organization.    

BGC  Report:   Could  Kaya  Thomas  be  the  next  black  female  Mark  Zuckerberg?  She's  on  her  way.  In  fact,  there  was  a  time  in  the  early  years  of  computing,  where  women  dominated  the  software  development  field.  Ever  heard  of  Jean  Jennings  Bartik?  One  of  the  creators  of  the  ENIAC  computer  back  in  World  War  II?  What  about  Grace  Hopper?  One  of  the  first  programmers  of  the  Harvard  Mark  I  computer  in  1944,  she  created  the  programming  language  COBOL,  coined  the  term  debugging,  and  liked  to  use  wires  to  demonstrate  how  fast  a  nanosecond  could  travel.  

Grace    Hopper:   Finally  one  morning,  in  total  desperation,  I  called  over  to  the  engineering  building  and  I  said,  please  cut  off  a  nanosecond  and  send  it  over  to  me.    

BGC  Report:   Margaret  Hamilton?  She  led  the  software  engineering  division  for  the  Apollo  11  mission  and  her  team's  work  prevented  an  abort  of  the  Apollo  11  moon  landing.  

Astronaut:   [inaudible  00:25:00]  the  eagle  has  landed.    

BGC  Report:   Then  there's  Ada  Lovelace.  She  wrote  the  very  first  computer  algorithm,  making  her  the  first  computer  programmer  ever  and  dreamed  up  the  concept  of  artificial  intelligence,  way  back  in  the  19th  century.  She  defined  the  digital  age.  Listen  up,  Silicon  Valley,  last  fall,  for  the  first  time,  students  of  color  became  the  majority  in  American  public  schools.  This  is  the  workforce  of  the  near  future  and  the  next  Ada  Lovelace  could  be  coming  out  of  one  of  the  chapters  of  Black  Girls  Code.  

Kimberly  Bryant:   I  didn't  want  to  say,  "Black  Girls  Maybe  Can  Code,"  or,  "Black  Girls  May  Like  Coding."  It  was  really  specific  that  I  wanted  to  say,  "This  is  something  that  girls  of  color  do.  This  is  something  that  girls  of  color  can  do  well."  

Narrator:   That's  it  for  the  lift  episode,  number  five  of  the  Slack  Variety  Pack.    

Narrator  3:   Next  episode.  

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Narrator:   Learn  insider  secrets  to  make  your  passwords  unhackable.    

Speaker  1:   I  think  that  merging  data  passwords  is  one  way  of  increasing  the  complexity.    

Narrator:   Meet  a  man  who  learned  about  leadership  by  diving  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  

Speaker  2:   We  survived  because  we  were  two  guys  who  were  inhabiting  each  other's  minds  and  had  this  technical  empathy  for  the  problem.    

Narrator:   Thanks  to  today's  tech-­‐driven  economy,  there's  a  whole  generation  of  parents  who  have  no  idea  what  their  kids  do  for  a  living.  

Parent  1:   What  do  you  mean,  "What  does  he  do?"    

Parent  2:   I  have  no  idea.  

Parent  3:   I  know  he  posts  stuff  on  Facebook  or  for  iPods  ...  

Parent  4:   He  implements  a  form  of  business.    

Narrator  3:   The  details.  

Narrator:   Elevators,  pitches,  watches,  voicemail  breakups,  Black  Girls  Code.  All  the  stories  in  this  episode  have  their  own  sound  cloud  files,  so  you  can  share  them  easily  with  friends.  Information  about  this  podcast  is  on  Slack.com/varietypack.  Check  out  our  nifty  infographic  that  matches  elevator-­‐style  elevator  pitches  with  the  real  companies  that  use  them.  Subscribe  to  this  podcast  on  iTunes,  or  wherever  you  get  your  podcasts.  Voicemails  may  be  dying,  but  we  still  like  listening  and  playing  yours.  415-­‐992-­‐7561.  To  take  us  out,  here's  Rich  Aucoin  with  Are  You  Experiencing?,  from  the  album  Ephemeral.  Thank  you  for  listening.  (singing)  Slack.  Making  work  less  worky.